It stars one of the greatest Hollywood actors of all time, was made by one of its most famous directors and is based on a book by one of the world’s best-selling authors. So perhaps it’s not a big surprise that it went on to be called “the scariest horror movie ever made” while also being ranked among the best films of all time.
Stanley Kubrick’s epic and twisted The Shining was made in 1980 and based on the Stephen King novel of the same name (though King reportedly does not like the film). It stars Jack Nicholson, in one of his earliest roles, as Jack Torrance, a father who takes a job as the winter caretaker for an isolated hotel cut off from the world by heavy snowfall.
A previous caretaker had killed his wife, two young daughters and himself in the hotel a decade earlier. Whether it’s the isolation, supernatural forces or his own mental health, Torrance descends into madness to become violent, unhinged and fixated on murdering his family.
The film contains one of the most iconic in cinema history, when Torrance uses an axe to break through a door to get to his wife, Wendy, who screams in terror as she looks on. As he manages to create a hole in the door, Torrance says: “Wendy, I’m home.” The film did not win any Academy Awards but nevertheless became an all-time classic.
In 2010, The Guardian named it as a winner in its Horror category in its Greatest Films Of All Time and Empire ranks it 35th in its list of the best films ever, saying: “Stanley Kubrick’s elegant adaptation of Stephen King’s haunted-hotel story, starring a wonderfully deranged Jack Nicholson, is often cited as The Scariest Horror Movie Ever Made (perhaps tied with The Exorcist), but it’s also the Least Suitable Movie To Watch On Father’s Day Ever. Unless you’re the kind of Dad who thinks obsessively typing the same sentence over and over then chasing after your wife and kid with an axe constitutes good parenting.”
Stephen King did not like The Shining
Prolific author Stephen King, one of the world’s best-known and best selling writers who is also responsible for the stories behind classics like The Shawshank Redemption, It, The Green Mile and Stand By Me, did not like Kubrick’s film.
“When it opened, a lot of the reviews weren’t very favourable and I was one of those reviewers. I kept my mouth shut at the time, but I didn’t care for it much,” King has said.
“The character of Jack Torrance has no arc in that movie. Absolutely no arc at all. When we first see Jack Nicholson, he’s in the office of Mr Ullman, the manager of the hotel, and you know, then, he’s crazy as a sh**house rat. All he does is get crazier. In the book, he’s a guy who’s struggling with his sanity and finally loses it. To me, that’s a tragedy. In the movie, there’s no tragedy because there’s no real change.”
He described the film as “a beautiful film and it looks terrific” but is “like a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it”. Seven years after The Shining, Kubrick released an “all-time great” war film “unlike any before or since”.
Where was The Shining filmed?
Despite being set in the snowy mountains of the USA, most of The Shining was in fact filmed at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, England. However, some exterior shots were filmed in the States and the Timberline Lodge in Oregon was filmed for the establishing shots of the fictional Overlook Hotel. The lodge is a ski resort and does get cut off and isolated in real life as in the film.
What people say about The Shining
Calling the film “deeply scary and strange”, The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw said of The Shining: “The unhurried pace, extended dialogue scenes and those sudden, sinister inter-titles contribute to the insidious unease.
“Nicholson’s performance as the abusive father who is tipped over the edge is a thrillingly scabrous, black-comic turn, and the final shot of his face in daylight is a masterstroke. The Shining doesn’t look like a genre film. It looks like a Kubrick film.”
In The Times, Wendy Ide says it is a “superb adaptation” in which “the supernatural joins forces with psychosis”, while Ben Walters in Time Out calls it “a masterpiece”.
But David Denby, writing in New York Magazine, said: “There are a few terrific thrills, and some eerie moments of dislocation that only Kubrick could achieve, but most of the movie is unfelt, unscary, and bizarrely heavy-handed. It’s the first pompous haunted-house movie.”